Today, we once again hear Christ speak to us, saying,
Two men enter. One man leaves.
This is the chant of post-apocalypse Bartertown, in the
movie, Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome. What the chanting audience is
witnessing is justice. Two men have committed a crime. They are thrown into the
arena to kill each other. If you die, you’re guilty. If you live, you’re
innocent.
Two men: The Pharisee and the tax collector.
Two men: Cain and Abel.
Two men: Christ and you.
The 4th chapter of Genesis starts in a surprising
upbeat manner. Even though Adm and Eve have just been expelled from Eden , they are celebrating a birth. It seems as though life outside will not be as bad as previously feared.
Like last week, it appears as if God is wrong and there is nothing to fear in
this new world.
But continue reading, and you find you are dead wrong.
Literally. In the account of Cain and Abel, we see real life outside the
garden. Here is presented to you is life under the newly obtained “knowledge of
good and evil”. We now are in on the experiment that Adam and Eve started:
ruling themselves.
Freed from the shackles of Godly intervention and imposed
Law, Adam and Eve now "create" for themselves. Eve cries out at Cain’s birth, "I have
created man just like God did". In this new-found freedom from Eden, Adam and Eve
raise their own sons, teach them, and find that things aren’t so
bad.
Cain grows up into this new freedom. He tills the ground as God said he would. He also creates. This time it is produce and crops. From barren
ground, Cain tends his gardens and produces 100 fold. He is living the life.
What’s Eden
anyway? Life is good.
But Cain is not the only man around. Two men have entered
this new, freedom-laden world. Abel, his brother, is also there. Abel is second
born. He is not tilling the ground as God said he would and instead tends to animals,
but he appears to be equally successful.
Two men go up to God to pray. Cain brings his crops. Abel,
his fat portions. Two men enter. One man leaves. In the new freedom, apparently
Cain is free to murder and Eve is free to weep for her dead son.
Two men go up to the Temple
to pray: the Pharisee and the tax collector. Two brothers. Both claim Adam and Eve as ancestors. Both claim the Temple as their own. Both
claim access to God through prayer. Both bring their offerings before God. Two
men enter, one man leaves.
But you must admit that Cain and the Pharisee did not
necessarily get the better end of the deal. If Abel suffered death, Cain
suffered worse than death in his sin. If the tax collector suffered shame in
sin, the Pharisee will be denied access to heaven.
We must amend our Australian film-making friends. It is not
two men enter one man leaves. It is: “Two men enter; no man leaves.” In a
post-Eden world, no one wins. In a land of enlightened, fruit of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, death is the only winner.
Your enlightenment, superior perceptions, knowledge; they
all betray. They betrayed Abel. They betrayed the tax collector and they
hoodwinked Cain and the Pharisee. They were all blind; indeed every one of you
is still blind to the fact. Whether you die at the hand of your brother,
society, or live having committed the crime: no one’s getting out of here
alive.
All of you enter. None of you leave. All of you are guilty.
None are innocent.
The justice for Abel and the tax collector goes unfulfilled.
There is none for them. Cain and the Pharisee get to live their lives. Though
they are both cursed, their superior intellect has allowed them a life after
such a life-ending disaster.
So where was Jesus when Abel needed Him? Where is Jesus when
we need Him as we strive and fail in sin? When God breaks into the world of
flesh and blood, there are no longer only two men in the fray. Jesus enters as
the unprecedented and illegal entrant, increasing the number to three.
Now, God takes on flesh for the tax collector and barges in
where He is not wanted or received: your heart. Since everyone is dead in their
sin, there is no one to stop Him. Indeed, who can oppose God when His Word goes
out to accomplish what it will? No one.
Jesus enters the fray. He doesn’t have to. He could have
snapped His fingers and accomplished the same thing, but God became man and
dwelt among us to fight for us on the cross. Now it is you and Christ that enter; two men
enter, one man leaves. You get to leave. Christ stays behind to die your death.
High above all the knowledge of good and evil that Eden ’s tree gave, is
God’s knowledge. Where Eve, Cain, and the Pharisee run from a benevolent God
Who only wishes to serve forgiveness, Jesus runs towards the wrath they incurred for
doing so. Where Adam, Abel, and the tax collector failed in doing justice,
Jesus fulfills that for them, by dying on the cross.
Eve, Cain, the Pharisee, and you want immediate results. In
all conventional wisdom, justice is best if it is served swiftly. Less hurt.
Less damage. However, true justice is only served by Christ and that only
through a promise. A promise that all knowledge, all murder, all death, and all
suffering will end.
What Abel and the tax collector are praised for is not their
ability to die at the right time, nor is it their own humility. A true believer
is praised for the humility of his master: the humility of Jesus.
“By faith Abel offered to God a more
acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous,
God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he
died, he still speaks.” (Heb 11:4)
By faith alone Abel was able to stand in front of and endure
his brother’s hatred and now his blood cries out to God, not for justice, but
for propitiation; for atonement and forgiveness.
By faith alone was the tax collector able to come so close
to the dwelling place of God on earth, with all his sins, and find justification freely given to
his repentant heart and it is by faith alone that you all stand here today.
Reason tells you to flee from faith. Reason tells you that
all this “Christian living” is not worth the satisfaction to be had by the ways
of the world. Intellect tells you that it is easier and far more enjoyable to
cast off the shackles of marriage and Church and to just do what feels right.
Knowledge tells you that the world is not so bad; that sin
won’t affect you and that God is not watching. That sin you committed last
week? Guess what, no lightning fell from heaven and nothing bad happened to you
because of it. We must not be so bad off. Jesus must be crazy.
Jesus tells you to run towards faith. Jesus tells you that,
because He lives, you will live. Jesus offers His blood which cries out greater
than Abel, because it doesn’t just cry for justice and forgiveness, it gives
it.
The Body and Blood Christ offers up on the altar of the
world atones for all sin. This Body and Blood covers the sins of Adam. They
cover the sins of Eve. They show mercy to the unrepentant Cain. They show mercy
even to the self-righteous Pharisee and they are offered for you and your own
forgiveness.
Jesus enters the death fray for you, bodily. He dies, but He
gets to leave again. In His act of sacrifice, Jesus breaks the idea of “two men
enter, one man leaves” in two. Jesus dies so that you may leave with your life.
Jesus also lives so that death no longer has a hold on you. Now, two men enter, but two
men leave. Where Cain and the Pharisee sought to impose the knowledge of Good
and Evil upon the world whatever the cost, Jesus imposes the Tree of Life to a
greater degree.
The fruit from the tree of Life, which is Jesus on the
cross, is a greater sacrifice and a greater Word than that of the knowledge of
Good and Evil and death. The word of the cross only kills Jesus, but is God’s
power of salvation for you.
By His Body and Blood, Jesus removes the shroud of sin,
death, and the devil (all fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)
and replaces it with justification, forgiveness, and mercy. It is Christ’s
humility that wins the day for all sinners destroyed by the fall into sin.
Cain did not have to struggle and remain in his sin. The
Pharisee did not have to think his righteousness came from his inner being.
They simply had to die to sin and be raised to new life. Abel shows us how to
die and the tax collect shows us the reception of this new life.
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